Tag: Psychologist

On This Day … 04 February

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People (Deaths)

  • 1987 – Carl Rogers, American psychologist and academic (b. 1902).

Carl Rogers

Carl Ransom Rogers (08 January 1902 to 04 February 1987) was an American psychologist and among the founders of the humanistic approach (and client-centred approach) in psychology. Rogers is widely considered to be one of the founding fathers of psychotherapy research and was honoured for his pioneering research with the Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions by the American Psychological Association (APA) in 1956.

The person-centred approach, his own unique approach to understanding personality and human relationships, found wide application in various domains such as psychotherapy and counselling (client-centred therapy), education (student-centred learning), organisations, and other group settings. For his professional work he was bestowed the Award for Distinguished Professional Contributions to Psychology by the APA in 1972. In a study by Steven J. Haggbloom and colleagues using six criteria such as citations and recognition, Rogers was found to be the sixth most eminent psychologist of the 20th century and second, among clinicians, only to Sigmund Freud. Based on a 1982 survey among 422 respondents of US and Canadian psychologists, he was considered the most influential psychotherapist in history (Sigmund Freud was ranked third).

On This Day … 01 February

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People (Births)

  • 1844 – G. Stanley Hall, American psychologist and academic (d. 1924).

G. Stanley Hall

Granville Stanley Hall (01 February 1846 to 24 April 1924) was a pioneering American psychologist and educator.

His interests focused on human life span development and evolutionary theory. Hall was the first president of the American Psychological Association and the first president of Clark University. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Hall as the 72nd most cited psychologist of the 20th century, in a tie with Lewis Terman.

On This Day … 27 January

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People (Births)

  • 1904 – James J. Gibson, American psychologist and academic (d. 1979).

James J. Gibson

James Jerome Gibson (27 January 1904 to 11 December 1979), was an American psychologist and one of the most important contributors to the field of visual perception.

Gibson challenged the idea that the nervous system actively constructs conscious visual perception, and instead promoted ecological psychology, in which the mind directly perceives environmental stimuli without additional cognitive construction or processing.

A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked him as the 88th most cited psychologist of the 20th century, tied with John Garcia, David Rumelhart, Louis Leon Thurstone, Margaret Floy Washburn, and Robert S. Woodworth.

On This Day … 24 January

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People (Births)

  • 1850 – Hermann Ebbinghaus, German psychologist (d. 1909).
  • 1853 – Sigbert Josef Maria Ganser, German psychiatrist (d. 1931).

People (Deaths)

  • 1971 – Bill W., American activist, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous (b. 1895).

Hermann Ebbinghaus

Hermann Ebbinghaus (24 January 1850 to 26 February 1909) was a German psychologist who pioneered the experimental study of memory, and is known for his discovery of the forgetting curve and the spacing effect.

He was also the first person to describe the learning curve. He was the father of the neo-Kantian philosopher Julius Ebbinghaus.

Sigbert Josef Maria Ganser

Sigbert Josef Maria Ganser (24 January 1853 to 04 January 1931) was a German psychiatrist born in Rhaunen.

He earned his medical doctorate in 1876 from the University of Munich. Afterwards he worked briefly at a psychiatric clinic in Würzburg, and later as an assistant to neuroanatomist Bernhard von Gudden (1824-1886) in Munich. In 1886, he became head of the psychiatric department at Dresden General Hospital. Among his students was neurologist Hans Queckenstedt (1876-1918).

Sigbert Ganser is remembered for a hysterical disorder that he first described in 1898. He identified the disorder in three prisoners while working at a prison in Halle. The features included approximate or nonsensical answers to simple questions, perceptual abnormalities, and clouding of consciousness. Ganser believed that these symptoms were an associative reaction caused by an unconscious attempt by the patient to escape from an intolerable mental situation. The disorder was to become known as Ganser syndrome.

Bill W.

William Griffith Wilson (26 November 1895 to 24 January 1971), also known as Bill Wilson or Bill W., was the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA).

AA is an international mutual aid fellowship with about 2 million members worldwide belonging to approximately 10,000 groups, associations, organisations, cooperatives, and fellowships of alcoholics helping other alcoholics achieve and maintain sobriety. Following AA’s Twelfth Tradition of anonymity, Wilson is commonly known as “Bill W.” or “Bill.” In order to identify each other, members of AA will sometimes ask others if they are “friends of Bill”. Although this question can be confusing, because “Bill” is a common name, it does provide a means of establishing the common experience of AA membership. After Wilson’s death in 1971, and amidst much controversy within the fellowship, his full name was included in obituaries by journalists who were unaware of the significance of maintaining anonymity within the organisation.

Wilson’s sobriety from alcohol, which he maintained until his death, began 11 December 1934. In 1955 Wilson turned over control of AA to a board of trustees. Wilson died of emphysema complicated by pneumonia from smoking tobacco in 1971. In 1999 Time listed him as “Bill W.: The Healer” in the Time 100: The Most Important People of the Century.

On This Day … 21 January

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People (Births)

Wolfgang Kohler

Wolfgang Köhler (21 January 1887 to 11 June 1967) was a German psychologist and phenomenologist who, like Max Wertheimer and Kurt Koffka, contributed to the creation of Gestalt psychology.

During the Nazi regime in Germany, he protested against the dismissal of Jewish professors from universities, as well as the requirement that professors give a Nazi salute at the beginning of their classes. In 1935 he left the country for the United States, where Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania offered him a professorship. He taught with its faculty for 20 years, and did continuing research. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Köhler as the 50th most cited psychologist of the 20th century.

Joseph Nicolosi

Joseph Nicolosi (24 January 1947 to 08 March 2017) was an American clinical psychologist who advocated and practised “reparative therapy”, a form of the pseudoscientific treatment of conversion therapy that he claimed could help people overcome or mitigate their homosexual desires and replace them with heterosexual ones. Nicolosi was a founder and president of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH). Medical institutions warn that conversion therapy is ineffective and may be harmful, and that there is no evidence that sexual orientation can be changed by such treatments.

Nicolosi described his ideas in Reparative Therapy of Male Homosexuality: A New Clinical Approach (1991) and three other books. Nicolosi proposed that homosexuality is often the product of a condition he described as gender-identity deficit caused by an alienation from, and perceived rejection by, formative individuals of the subject’s gender which interrupts normal masculine or feminine identification process. He also held that adaptation to gender trauma during formative years could alienate a child from their “fundamental nature.” His goal was to restore “that which functions in accordance with its biological design.”

On This Day … 20 January

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People (Births)

People (Deaths)

  • 1944 – James McKeen Cattell, American psychologist and academic (b. 1860).
  • 2012 – Alejandro Rodriguez, Venezuelan-American paediatrician and psychiatrist (b. 1918).

Nikos Sideris

Nikos Sideris (Greek: Νίκος Σιδέρης; born 20 January 1952), is a Greek psychiatrist, translator, poet and writer.

Sideris studied medicine at the University of Athens. He then settled in Paris for his postgraduate studies (specialising in Psychiatry, History and Neuropsychology-Neurolinguistics). He is a PhD of Panteion University Psychology Department and teaching psychoanalyst, member of the Strasbourg School of Psychoanalysis (E.P.S.) and the European Federation of Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic School of Strasburg (FEDEPSY). He works as a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and family therapist in Athens.

His book “Children do not need psychologists. They need parents!” (Τα παιδιά δεν θέλουν ψυχολόγο. Γονείς θέλουν) became a non-fiction best-seller in Greece.

James McKeen Cattell

James McKeen Cattell (25 May 1860 to 20 January 1944), American psychologist, was the first professor of psychology in the United States, teaching at the University of Pennsylvania, and long-time editor and publisher of scientific journals and publications, most notably the journal Science. He also served on the board of trustees for Science Service, now known as Society for Science & the Public (or SSP), from 1921-1944.

At the beginning of Cattell’s career, many scientists regarded psychology as, at best, a minor field of study, or at worst a pseudoscience such as phrenology. Perhaps more than any of his contemporaries, Cattell helped establish psychology as a legitimate science, worthy of study at the highest levels of the academy. At the time of his death, The New York Times hailed him as “the dean of American science.” Yet Cattell may be best remembered for his uncompromising opposition to American involvement in World War I. His public opposition to the draft led to his dismissal from his position at Columbia University, a move that later led many American universities to establish tenure as a means of protecting unpopular beliefs.

Alejandro Rodriguez

Alejandro Rodriguez (February 1918 to 20 January 2012) was a Venezuelan-American paediatrician and psychiatrist, known for his pioneering work in child psychiatry. He was the director of the division of child psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and conducted pivotal studies on autism and other developmental disorders in children.

On This Day … 19 January

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People (Deaths)

  • 1987 – Lawrence Kohlberg, American psychologist and academic (b. 1927).

Lawrence Kohlberg

Lawrence Kohlberg (25 October 1927 to 19 January 1987) was an American psychologist best known for his theory of stages of moral development.

He served as a professor in the Psychology Department at the University of Chicago and at the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University. Even though it was considered unusual in his era, he decided to study the topic of moral judgment, extending Jean Piaget’s account of children’s moral development from twenty-five years earlier. In fact, it took Kohlberg five years before he was able to publish an article based on his views. Kohlberg’s work reflected and extended not only Piaget’s findings but also the theories of philosophers George Herbert Mead and James Mark Baldwin. At the same time he was creating a new field within psychology: “moral development”.

In an empirical study using six criteria, such as citations and recognition, Kohlberg was found to be the 30th most eminent psychologist of the 20th century.

On This Day … 18 January

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People (Births)

  • 1932 – Robert Anton Wilson, American psychologist, author, poet, and playwright (d. 2007).

Robert Anton Wilson

Robert Anton Wilson (born Robert Edward Wilson; 18 January 1932 to 11 January 2007) was an American author, futurist, and self-described agnostic mystic. Recognised within Discordianism as an Episkopos, pope and saint, Wilson helped publicize Discordianism through his writings and interviews.

Wilson described his work as an “attempt to break down conditioned associations, to look at the world in a new way, with many models recognized as models or maps, and no one model elevated to the truth”. His goal was “to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone but agnosticism about everything.”

In addition to writing several science-fiction novels, Wilson also wrote non-fiction books on extrasensory perception, mental telepathy, metaphysics, paranormal experiences, conspiracy theory, sex, drugs and what Wilson himself called “quantum psychology”.

Following a career in journalism and as an editor, notably for Playboy, Wilson emerged as a major countercultural figure in the mid-1970s, comparable to one of his co-authors, Timothy Leary, as well as Terence McKenna.

On This Day … 17 January

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People (Births)

  • 1881 – Harry Price, English psychologist and author (d. 1948).
  • 1887 – Ola Raknes, Norwegian psychoanalyst and philologist (d. 1975).
  • 1945 – Anne Cutler, Australian psychologist and academic.

Harry Price

Harry Price (17 January 1881 to 29 March 1948) was a British psychic researcher and author, who gained public prominence for his investigations into psychical phenomena and his exposing fraudulent spiritualist mediums.

He is best known for his well-publicised investigation of the purportedly haunted Borley Rectory in Essex, England.

Ola Raknes

Ola Raknes (17 January 1887 to 28 January 1975) was a Norwegian psychologist, philologist and non-fiction writer.

Born in Bergen, Norway, he was internationally known as a psychoanalyst in the Reichian tradition. He has been described as someone who spent his entire life working with the conveying of ideas through many languages and between different epistemological systems of reference, science and religion (Dannevig, 1975). For large portions of his life he was actively contributing to the public discourse in Norway. He has also been credited for his contributions to strengthening and enriching the Nynorsk language and its use in the public sphere.

Raknes was known as a thorough philologist and a controversial therapist. Internationally he was known as one of Wilhelm Reich’s closest students and defenders.

Anne Cutler

(Elizabeth) Anne Cutler (born 1945 in Melbourne) FRS, FBA, FASSA is a Research Professor at the MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development, Western Sydney University and Emeritus Director of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen.

After studying languages and psychology in Melbourne, Berlin and Bonn, Anne Cutler embraced psycholinguistics when it emerged as an independent field, going on to complete her PhD in the discipline at the University of Texas at Austin.

On This Day … 15 January

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People (Births)

  • 1842 – Josef Breuer, Austrian physician and psychiatrist (d. 1925).
  • 1877 – Lewis Terman, American psychologist, eugenicist, and academic (d. 1956).
  • 1958 – Boris Tadić, Serbian psychologist and politician, 16th President of Serbia.

Josef Breuer

Josef Breuer (15 January 1842 to 20 June 1925) was a distinguished physician who made key discoveries in neurophysiology, and whose work in the 1880s with his patient Bertha Pappenheim, known as Anna O., developed the talking cure (cathartic method) and laid the foundation to psychoanalysis as developed by his protégé Sigmund Freud.

Lewis Terman

Lewis Madison Terman (15 January 1877 to 21 December 1956) was an American psychologist and author. He was noted as a pioneer in educational psychology in the early 20th century at the Stanford Graduate School of Education.

He is best known for his revision of the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales and for initiating the longitudinal study of children with high IQs called the Genetic Studies of Genius. He was a prominent eugenicist and was a member of the Human Betterment Foundation. He also served as president of the American Psychological Association. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Terman as the 72nd most cited psychologist of the 20th century, in a tie with G. Stanley Hall.

Boris Tadic

Boris Tadić (born 15 January 1958) is a Serbian politician who served as the president of Serbia from 2004 to 2012.

Tadić was a member of the Democratic Party since its establishment in 1990, and has been their president from 2004 until 2012. After the downfall of Milošević, he was appointed in the government as the Minister of Telecommunications of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and would later serve as the first Minister of Defence of Serbia and Montenegro before being elected as the president in 2004. He was re-elected for his second term in 2008. Following his defeat in the 2012 presidential election and poor party ratings, he stepped down in November 2012, to take the position of the party’s Honorary President. After a split with the new leadership in January 2014, Tadić left the Democratic Party and formed his own New Democratic Party (later renamed Social Democratic Party) for the 2014 parliamentary election.

Tadić strongly advocates close ties with the European Union (EU) and Serbia’s European integration. During his presidency, the EU has abolished visas for Serbian citizens traveling to the Schengen Area countries, Serbian government signed the Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) and received an EU candidate status, as well as, Serbia has completed obligations to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). He became the first Serbian head of state or head of government to visit the Srebrenica Genocide Memorial and he launched an initiative for the Serbian parliament to adopt a resolution condemning the Srebrenica massacre. The period of a coalition government led by the Tadić’s Democratic Party was characterized by the challenges of the Kosovo declaration of independence and the global financial crisis, leading to low rates of economic growth. He is widely regarded as a pro-Western leader, who also favours balanced relations with Russia, the United States and the EU.